Hacker News Reader

Comment by ArgyleSound | Hacker News Reader

I guess the one thing this article doesn’t answer is why the default hardware configuration is for the slower transfer rate? Is there some downside to this mod?

View on HN

In the Future Improvements section on the linked blog post to the original mod it says "HS400 mode is supported by hardware but it's not currently supported by the sunxi-mmc drivers in the Linux kernel."

So it seems plausible that support for the faster HS200 mode (that's enabled by this mod) was added after the original devices shipped. Just a guess though.

If you do the mod and it causes issues, you can revert to the original DDR52 mode through software, assuming you didn't break anything while soldering.

Just off the top of my head (without doing in-depth research in the to PinePhone specs), potential gotchas:

1) The 1V8 power supply cannot cope with the additional power demand (just cause "it boots" doesn't mean it will be fine in all scenarios).

2) The SKU of the chip used cannot operate (or is not guaranteed to operate) at the higher speed + lower voltage.

3) The phone stops being EMC compliant.

A bit of research, probing and testing can answer those questions and screen for others. The PinePhone seems like it is aimed at a very technical crowd so I'm sure someone will figure it out :)

edit - formatting

Probably just a fail-safe configuration that never got adjusted after so many iterations. As I understand it the hardware is still developed by a small team and they are working on a diverse number of different platforms (PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, Pinebook, Pinebook Pro, PineTab, PineCube, PineDio - the list goes on). They tend to have their hands full just getting things working and fixing bugs.

It seems the issue is that they are trying to develop too many things.

I think this wide approach works really well with their goal of community driven development. All the hardware variety gets more people interested and more people contributing. A person who cuts their teeth on one device might be a pioneer for the next one.

I feel I'm a sucker for these devices. I love all of them =)

The pinebook pro caught my attention first (actually bought both an ANSI and ISO variants). Then the pinephone was delivered to my house. The pinepower followed shortly thereafter by the pinetime. I am anxiously awaiting for the pinenote to develop into a useful device, and I'll prolly end up getting that as well.

I've had a great experience with nearly all of the devices. The pinephone is a bit anemic power/ speed-wise for me to use it often, but I knew that going in. It still has a lot of potential and development on the software side has been fun to watch.

  > I feel I'm a sucker for these devices. I love all of them =)

I would very much love a PinePhone, but I'm married to the Samsung Note stylus. Is there any really good active stylus, that works as well as the Note? I don't need any particular app, just using a stylus on the screen for general use (clicking, swiping, keyboard, long-press) would be great.

The rubber stylii are decent for clicking, but horrible for swiping.

I reluctantly gave up on the Note series after the Note 4 due to cost. I do miss the stylus input.

That might be by design. Hardware design is expensive and investing many hours on each device is unsustainable unless you have big volumes.

They also released a .. soldering iron, named Pinecil. Apparently it's a great tool.

If anything, I expect this to use lower power. However, it won't work with some SD cards that one could possibly want to use via an eMMC breakout adapter. That's my suspicion for why they had this in a late board revision in the first place.

There is a separate microsd slot on the pinephone, why one would want to use an adapter from the semi-proprietary emmc connector to microsd is beyond me.

Right, seems pretty irresponsible for the article writer to be writing to an audience that is geared towards beginners or at least people that don't understand electronics. It is irresponsible to not write about or at least try to deduce what the ramifications of doing this mod will do. And if they can't do that, I argue it would be better to stay out of the topic for writing purposes.

It's a phone, not a pacemaker. Contributions to the sum of human knowledge should be welcomed even if the person isn't "qualified", those with more to add should do so if they feel inclined.

Who's opening their phones and soldering them without a basic understanding of electronics?

What are you talking about? It’s a cell phone. And besides the world does not need to hand hold every singe scenario in case someone not smart enough comes along. Ya working with electrical mains should put out a strong warning but this is nothing. If people can not evaluate the skill level required before they do something that is on them. If someone needs to tell you taking the exposed electronics of your phone and taking a several hundred degree hot soldering iron to those electronics and then also removing parts that there is a risk you could damage something then you have a lot more to worry about then ruining a phone.

Hard disagree. No one should do anything if they don't understand the consequences. It's no one's job to baby proof the world. If someone hasn't learnt that lesson yet they might be paying looks up PinePhone price $399 to learn it.

The PinePhone is $150 with the convergence model being $200. The unreleased Pro model is $400, but this hack presumably wouldn't apply to that one.

The pro an rk3399 which deals with the MMC supplies itself so it can actually switch the voltage in software

A lot of people write SW without underestanding the consequences. See recent NPM disaster for one example. Or Firefox (UI, "features") for another example. Ok, and Solar Winds for the best example.

I wrote software without understanding the consequences. That's how I learned.

Nobody paid me to do it, sure, but I did anyway.

Yeah, all those absolute beginners with PinePhones and soldering skills. Or, maybe it isn't a problem because almost anyone who can read and understand the instructions let alone casually follow them is probably going to be OK.

If the article instead purported to show you where on the Switch you could attach a car battery using jumper cables and spit to unlock Yoshi's Island then I could see you having a point.

> If the article instead purported to show you where on the Switch you could attach a car battery using jumper cables and spit to unlock Yoshi's Island then I could see you having a point

Wait do you have a YouTube video on how I can do this?

If I did then I would be too busy recuperating to respond.

They're not. Anybody that has a soldering iron warm and that doesn't shy away from hacking on a board populated with SMD components and that makes it past the 'do this only if you feel confident with the procedure' warning is well above beginner level.

PinePhone's likely are mostly in the hands of people who have significant overlap with those in that group mentioned above rather than your average grandmother, unless she takes after Grace Hopper.

Finally, this is hacker news, which once upon a time meant that people who frequent this site knew how to make things, and there are still a few of us left. So bring on the soldering required articles.

See also the recent thread on headphones where people are complaining about non-replaceable batteries and longevity, but a minority are digging out soldering irons and replacing batteries and fixes broken devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com